A friend of mine told me about a friend of hers who tried out a new class this week at the yoga studio she regularly attends.

The male teacher, a stranger to her, had undressed slowly during the class, stripping off various layers of clothing, and by the end he was only wearing a jock strap.

Her friend was very uncomfortable witnessing this man shed his garments one piece at a time. She wondered how he could think his behavior was acceptable, and she was stunned by the boldness of it. How come he didn’t know what his boundaries were?

I wondered what made this yoga guy think that showing off his buttocks in a million different poses was okay with his students. Why didn’t he just call his class “Near Naked Yoga?”

To me the whole thing smacks of a man out of control, flaunting his body when no one asked for his body to be flaunted.

This flasher/teacher moment sounds like an episode from Larry David’s Curb YourEnthusiasm. I can just picture the students catching each other’s eyes and grimacing, but not saying anything until afterward, when they commiserated with one another in the parking lot.

Some people will really act out if they have an audience—and an unsuspecting, captive one was perfect for this man’s agenda.

Sounds like this man/boy needs to turn his focus from Yoga to Life Modelling. At least when the class arrives they’ll know what they came for and why they paid to look at him.

The main draw at Boxcar Barney’s in Mayville, New York is ice cream, especially on hot summer afternoons like this one. When I walked up to order, the line had dwindled to two or three waiting customers, but I knew it would swell again shortly. I was happy that I got my food at just the right time.

Sitting on a plastic bench in the shade, I reflected on how this place was a little bit of heaven. Today it wasn’t the Maple Walnut ice cream for me; it was an order of broiled hot dog with fries. I watched the sailboats and motorboats on Chautauqua Lake.

Then, I saw a big group of kids from a nearby day camp walking ever so quickly, almost running towards Boxcar Barney’s. They had that look of kids on a mission. They had waited all afternoon for their ice cream.

I turned to the woman on the bench behind me. “I bet you’re happy that you got that ice cream when you did,” I said, nodding toward the oncoming crowd.

“I sure am,” she said. As we chatted, I learned that the young man with her was her visiting grandson, who was going to college on the West Coast.

The three of us watched the campers as they walked up to place their orders. The most intriguing kid to me was a boy of about eleven. All the other campers went to stand in line, but he tossed his backpack down on the grass, made a place for himself, pulled out a hardback book, and began to read.

A few of the boys came and sat at my table after they had gotten their ice cream cones because there wasn’t room anywhere else. I found it quite charming how they went about it. No one asked if they could sit with me, they just looked at me to see if I was okay and then quickly sat down and started talking with each other.

All of a sudden a boy about ten with flame-orange hair and matching freckles said to me, “Can I have your french fries?” He pointed to two of them that had fallen out of my cardboard food basket onto the table. I was about to act motherly and say to him that the fries might be unsanitary, but then I decided that if he really wanted the two lone fries it wouldn’t hurt him.

“Sure,” I said. “You can have them.”

“Thanks,” he said, grinning. He gobbled them up so fast that I wanted to offer the rest of my fries to him, but that seemed like I’d be crossing the stranger line. The fries on the table were up for grabs. The fries on my plate had my stamp on them. Some of the boys looked at the French Fry Conqueror in amazement, like they wished that they had asked me for fries too.

My table-mates licked their ice cream really fast until it quickly disappeared and then chased each other around, roaring with laughter. Some of them even briefly stopped to visit with their book-reading friend.

Together the grandma, her grandson and I just watched the campers, amused by their antics.

Suddenly, the French Fry Boy came up to me and said, “Thanks,” and gave me a hug. I was so surprised that I had one of those did-that-just-happen reactions. It was really so charming of him to do. Such a small gesture on my part, forfeiting two lukewarm French fries, but to him it was a big deal.

I turned and looked at the grandma and grandson. They were grinning from ear to ear, along with me, and this exuberant, freckled, young stranger.

Just the other day I was biking along in a small town, and I heard the shrill cries of a child nearby. The hysteria silenced all other sounds. As I got closer, I saw that the cries were coming from a boy about five- years old with blond cherubic curls spilling out of his red helmet. His face was smeared with tears. There was an elderly man with a cane asking him if he was okay. “I lost my parents. I lost my parents,” he sobbed.

“Don’t worry the man,” said. “I’ll help you find them.”

“Thank goodness for this man,” I thought. Talk about a guardian angel. The boy hadn’t been alone for a second, before a kind stranger came to his aid. But what if the boy was afraid of this man? What if his parents had taught him about “stranger danger,” as well-meaning parents should. If so, he was in the midst of a true moral dilemma.

Suddenly I was worried about the man who was offering to help him, what if he was a pedophile? The media teaches parents to tell their children if they are ever lost to ask a woman for help. Now we all know that all women aren’t good. Maybe the child’s odds are just statistically better if he/she asks a woman for help. Right then, I decided that I needed to help too, that this man should not be the only person in charge of this little boy. And just as I was thinking that a young couple in their twenties appeared out of nowhere and walked right up to help the little boy.

I took a deep breath. What a relief I thought. What a beautiful picture of kindness. Three strangers on a splendid summer day, two walking on his right, one walking on his left. They headed towards the center of town. Whatever plans they had made and wherever they were going before they discovered the lost boy were on hold. Clearly, they had decided that doing the right thing to help him was the only choice.